Protein, Fat, and (Indifference About) Macros

From skwigg's journal:

"Based on your lunch it seems like you don't concern yourself with having a certain portion of protein at each meal, am I right?"

Nope, I don't concern myself. Or, I guess I should say that I don't concern myself if I know the meal has enough calories and fat to comfortably last 5-6 hours. I wouldn't have eaten just the Cranberry Walnut & Brie sweet potato, for example. It needed that rich cheesecake to go with it, or a piece of fatty meat, or quite a bit of peanut butter on the side, or something with a whole avocado.

Fat is more important to me than protein, which is probably blasphemy, but I experience zero benefits from overdoing protein and all kinds of benefits from eating a rather freaky amount of fat, so I just go with it. When I eat enough fat, my stomach and brain are content for hours after a meal. I don't think about food and I eat less overall. But give me 40g of protein in a nice salad with maybe 15g of fat, and an hour later I'd be willing to punch somebody in the face for a peanut butter sandwich.

Generally, I do eat some protein with every meal, but I don't stress about the amount, and I don't worry if some meals are light. There are enough steaks, chickens, and meatloafs happening that I'm in no danger of becoming weak and deficient. Looking at the big picture over time has helped me to be way less crazy. Trying to balance each meal or hit certain gram targets kept me cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Though I do realize that someone else may find that approach helpful.

There is a kind of malnutrition called "rabbit starvation" that happens when people try to survive on lean protein without sufficient carbohydrates and fat. Explorers and trappers used to get it in cold climates when wild game like rabbits were available but not much else. It causes headaches, fatigue, low blood pressure, and insatiable cravings for fat. I swear I did this to myself. LOL I'm cured now, but the thought of eating a high protein, low fat diet ever again makes my eye twitch.

Bodybuilding and clean eating dogma had me believing that I needed gobs of protein, the more the better, a minimum of 150g per day + green vegetables. So there was lots of chicken breast, protein powder and broccoli happening, but OMG, no oil, no yolks, fruit is bad, no dairy, or worse, fat-free dairy, forget about nuts, carrots are iffy, don't even think about corn, earn your potatoes. I internalized so much crazy.

Which brings us to the reason I drink olive oil, eat Skippy out of the jar, and melt cheese on everything. :-) I feel approximately eighty gajillion times better doing so. Fat is most important to me, carbs are almost equally important, protein is third behind the other two, but I do aim to eat all three at every meal. Did you know there's 24 grams of protein in a pint of Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Fudge Core? They never show that on those protein infographics next to the chickens and soybeans. LOL

How I've looked throughout my life is the result of what I consistently do. I've always strength trained. I'm not naturally muscular by any stretch of the imagination. I'm not naturally lean either, not since I was about 8 years old.

When I believed in 6 meals per day, at least 1g of protein per pound of body weight per day, clean eating, and earning my carbs, I weighed 15-20 pounds more than I do now, and it wasn't muscle. If being chronically dissatisfied with your bland, healthy meals causes you to think about food constantly, to eat more "allowed" foods than you need, and to experience frequent lapses disguised as refeeds, cheat days, and free meals, then lean isn't happening, not for long.

In Georgie's sabotaging thoughts series, she talks about nutritional reasoning. It's when you eat something, not because you're physically hungry, but because: post-workout carbs are important, you're low on protein today, it's time for your 3pm feeding, to balance your macros, My Fitness Pal says you have 194 calories left today, it's a cheat meal, vegetables are good for you, you need more fiber, you can't eat carbs without protein, fat is healthy, it's sugar-free, blah, blah, blah, lots of food thoughts that have nothing to do with being hungry.

It was that obsession with doing everything right that kept me from being lean, because I could find dozens of reasons to eat more at any given time. Protein was a big one! I always needed more protein, but adding more food doesn't make you leaner. More protein, more frequent meals, more vegetables, pre and post workout snacks, I was eating all these things because I believed they were necessary to get leaner, but eating LESS works so much better. I don't even know what happened to my brain. It was like logic left the building. Up was down, down was up. Maybe it was some kind of diet guru Stockholm syndrome where I came to love my captors. They could do no wrong. Surely they wouldn't have me force down an extra 400 calories worth of protein per day for no reason. Years later I'd realize they owned a supplement company, they sold protein bars, they were sponsored by such and such...or their captors were, and they were just passing along the brainwashing.

Anyway, I'm at my leanest when I listen to my body, enjoy my food, and eat just enough. I carry more body fat when nutritional reasoning enters the picture, or when rules/macros/fear override common sense.

This is sort of a random thought that came to me as I was putting my pizza box in the recycle bin. You know how I don't worry about eating enough protein or tracking grams? I realized that I don't need to worry because I eat enough overall. When you're only eating 1200-1500 calories per day, making sure enough protein happens is a legit concern. When you eat probably twice that, and you're having a 900-calorie pizza for breakfast like it's nothing, you'll just naturally get that 45 grams of protein, plus 12 more grams in your peanut butter-loaded ice cream. How funny! I'm like, dang, no wonder I'm not deficient...

Then I think about something like two pieces of peanut butter toast. That's 5g in each piece of bread, 11g in the three tablespoons of peanut butter, and I'm already over 20g of protein without even considering the rest of the meal. Throw in a Greek yogurt and we're at 40g of protein without meat, eggs, or protein powder ever entering into it.

So, yeah, no wonder it doesn't matter if I occasionally have a lowish protein meal like the cranberries, walnuts and Brie sweet potato. My other meals make up for it because I eat plenty of food and plenty of variety. But when I was afraid of pizza, and peanut butter, and bread, and was consuming mostly rabbit food, I'd have to deliberately think about where my protein was coming from and add a "safe" source to my meals. Egg whites were safe. Whey protein was safe. Beans and peanut butter were dangerous and inferior because the protein came with a lot of fat/carbs/calories.

Here's a thought. I have lots of friends who still track macros, count, and weigh their food, many of them happily, some not so happily. I realized that the ones who are enjoying it are doing exactly what I'm doing: They're eating just enough to support a fit body. They're generally healthy eaters who include all of their favorite foods regularly. They make it easy, automatic, and low stress by using a flexible template for their meals.

The all-or-nothing part of my brain wanted to come up with reasons why my way was right and they're doing it wrong. (You know, like to justify my way if I'm feeling insecure about it.) Then I realized, d'oh! We're doing the same thing! We're all eating in a way that meets our energy needs, preferences, and goals. I'm just doing it without the math and software.

I don't know if that will make any sense to anybody but me, but it makes me feel closer to my favorite clean eaters and IIFYMers. They don't need saving or educating, and I don't need a baking intervention. We're all eating in a way that works for us and produces great results.